Legend of the Peeing briton. Павел Тюрин

a protest against Hollywood’s hackwork akin to the ancient Greek hero Laocoön.

      Choreographic Drama[23]

      Ballet lovers also won’t be forgotten. There is an idea to make a ballet called ‘The Peeing Gentleman’, or simply ‘PB’ or ‘BP’. The plot will not reflect the real story of the hero precisely. The new drama will remind the audience of ‘The Lady and the Hooligan’, a 1918 Dmitri Shostacovitch ballet, based on a Vladimir Mayakovsky play.

      Prologue. Episode 1.

      This ballet’s libretto tells us of a tragic story of a boy named Richie. When he was at school he joined the scout movement and on the fateful day of 11 November 1991 he was appointed to be a guard of honour at the Baden Powell monument, the founder of the organization.

      That same day he was supposed to meet Barbie or Barbara Pointon (BP) next to the Theatre Royal at the Covent Garden. She was a young ballerina whom he had met when he was attending a studio learning the ballet figures. But the mishap occurred and the scout leader forgot to relieve the boy from his duty. But the scouts’ upbringing is founded on their word of honour and on the fulfilment of the promises. Even the scout motto Be Prepared is abbreviated to the same first letters that the founder’s name – Baden-Powell (BP)!

       Keep a healthy mind in a healthy body and be as strong as steel!

      At all times scouts need to Be Prepared for anything! A real scout would never abandon his post at the monument for a date with his Barbie. ‘You must stay, whatever happens, you must stay!’ as wrote a Soviet Russian author A. Panteleev in his short story ‘The Honest Word’. He wrote of a boy just like that, whom they had forgotten to relieve from his sentry duty in a war game, and who remained standing because he gave his word of honour!

      Act 1. Episode 2.

      After the play the prima-to-be waited for her beau, but soon she realized that he was not coming. So she went to look for him. As soon as she reached the Powell-Baden monument she witnessed Richie peeing at the foot of the monument. Ballerina’s huge eyes stared at Richie in amazement. Staring at him in disbelief and petrified with shock she uttered: ‘I knew that boys were different from girls, but I couldn’t expect that they differed that much!’[24] From her early childhood she knew thanks to the ‘Babу see’ broadcasts programmes, that little girls were made of sugar and spice, and every thing nice and little boys were made of snips and snails, and puppy dog tails. Once she was over the shock she exclaimed: ‘Oh! This is awful! You are really a brainless blockhead!’ On her weightless ballet feet she ran home to eat a piece of cake and cry.

      From then on the Briton became deeply disappointed in life and changed from BP – Be Prepared! Into PB (Peeing Briton). That day he realised the hidden meaning of the expression ‘All people are brothers.’ ‘Yeah…’ thought Rick, ‘but not all people are sisters.’

       ‘Yeah…’ – thought Rick

      The farewell words of the beloved about his deficit of brains smarted so much that he even consulted a trendy plastic surgeon in London. He wanted him to increase his brain size by adding silicon. The surgeon talked Rick out of it but the scars of the ballet infused brain trauma remained for life.

      Act 2. Episode 3.

      Some 15 years later, on the 10 November 2006 Rick found himself in Riga. This trip was his birthday present to his own 30th birthday. As soon as he landed, his feet carried him to the Latvian National Opera. The British have heard a lot about the choreographic mastery of such Rigans as Maris Liepa and Mikhail Baryshnikov. They were legendary in London.

      He went for a long walk after seeing ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ with his ‘dancing mind’[25] wondering why he couldn’t wake up his own Aurora. Finally he came to a sculpture group of his own people ‘A Lady with a Dog and George Armistead.[26] Once he greeted the former mayor (after all he was Scottish by origin) and bowed to his wife Cecilia Pyhlau, Richie petted the dog and for a moment it seemed that it snuggled against his feet and wiggled its tail.

      Episode 4.

      Rick was pleased having met people from his own land and so he followed the dark alley to the sound of trickling water. Once he reached the source he was spellbound. Right in front of him, in the middle of the fountain stood the nude

      ‘Nymph’[27] with an elegant and proud curve to her body. She was holding a

       The ‘Nymph’ looking like the sea ballerina-nereid reminded Richard of his Barbie

      huge seashell on her head as if supporting a crown while the crying children[28] around stretched their arms towards her. As soon as Rick saw the naked maiden with her back haughtily turned to the theatre he couldn’t stop staring at the changed, but nevertheless recognizable charming figure.[29] He thought that she was kicked out of ballet after all and now she stood there as an example of what becomes of ballerinas who prefer to spend their time not at the ballet bar but stripping/dancing at a pole in nightclubs. Of course, he was remembering his own ballerina.

      He longed to help her hold the crown that was getting heavier each year as it filled with change thrown by the tourists. So Richie came into a fountain and tried to reach for the seashell to help support the weight.[30] If a true Soviet person could have witnessed this scene they would have immediately thought that it was very much like the most famous Vera Muhina sculpture.[31]

      Act 3. Episode 5.

      Rick was so drawn to the seductive figure that he wanted to resurrect the petrified Nymph-Aurora (his Barbie) and to awaken her mutual feelings. But suddenly he noticed something shiny, high in the sky that reminded him of the promise of his young days. His heart was torn between staying with his beloved or to BP – Be Prepared! Everywhere! Always! and to follow the scouts’ star. And again Rick chose his duty. He stared at the monument to Freedom and Fatherland until on top of it he saw the scouts’ symbol – the fleur de lys, that has been a symbol of scouts from the very beginning of the organization.

       From afar the Freedom stars of the scouts’ symbol, the Lys, are so much like Milda’s stars!

      It was the Freedom Monument, in Latvian Brīvības Piemineklis (also BP!). He recalled the treacherous forgetfulness of the leader, his first love and the shaft of the banner with a three-leafed golden tip. And somewhere nearby the streams of the fountain ran live and… as if a switch has been turned in his head and everything changed. He experienced a real flip-flop or topsy-turvy of his inner world, as the English would say. The psychologists would call it a trigger (a switch that can swiftly change the state from one condition to another under a facilitating external signal). He couldn’t resist the overwhelming feelings and he peed, just like he did back then at the foot of his monument. Who could judge him?

      Hegel once said that events and persons take place twice: once as a tragedy, the second time as a farce. ‘No!’ says the Peeing Briton in a high language of choreography, ‘Georg Wilhelm Friedrich was mistaken!’

      The first and the second

23

Journal ‘Рas de deux – Рas de trois’.

24

Back then the youthful embarrassment did not gain wide publicity. Meanwhile, one Andrew Knysh took Richie’s place in Barbie’s heart and talked her into a nightclub to be a background dancer. He also sarcastically explained Richie’s actions by his self-determining desire to explore. To explore his trousers’ length, width, and especially depth. As the story shows the clever remark was prophetic and Rick found himself in the depth of Europe, in Latvia where he later did his heroic deed.

25

Rick must have been as impressed by the ballet as the drama critic Clive Barnes once was when he saw the triumphal performance by Maris Liepa in London, which prompted him to say: ‘His mind is dancing and body thinks!’

26

Rick decided to combine his trip to Riga with the Lāčplēsis Day celebrated as a symbol for independence struggle of Latvia. He reckoned not to go at the same time that Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second was in Riga. Her Majesty participated in opening the monument to George Armistead on the 18 October 2006. By the way, Armistead was granted a title of Baron by the Russian Tsar due to his diligence in developing the city of Riga. But as soon as Latvia separated from Russia his daughters were in a hurry to return back to Scotland.

27

In Ancient Greece the nymphs took part in the drunken orgies of Dionysus, but they only gave their love to the heroes and the beautiful youths as they drove them to frenzied inspiration.

28

‘Look at these children abandoned by their fathers!’ thought Rick as fear pierced him and he wondered if they could have been his.

29

As he hugged it he estimated the shape to be an assertive C.

30

She is not some woman of the East who is used to carrying boxes and baskets on her head. He couldn’t have known that in the years that passed she managed to travel a lot with her show. Not only had she been to Riga but to just about all the hot countries where the nymphs are particularly highly valued.

31

The pose was reminiscent of the Vera Mukhina’s (a born and raised Rigan) sculpture ‘Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman’ created for the Soviet pavilion for the Parisian International Exhibition in 1937.